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Absolutely and no problem, I’m behind replying to emails rn so I totally get taking a while to respond! XD

I have not read that but it sounds really interesting, I’ll have to look it u – *the literal swamp of books waiting for be to read them piled up over the years; NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!* I’ll totally have to look it up!

That’s a very good question, how to deal with those themes and still set up boundaries. I’m still discerning and looking tbh, it’s really case by case for me.

When I started writing my boundaries were 1) No characters get raped 2) the main character will never die in the end and didn’t really consider graphic content so much because *I was like thirteen and had no clue what my novel was in for*

Later on…writing became my coping mechanism and processing tool for emotions I’d kept bottled up for a really long time and so the rules kinda changed and I kinda let the story take over trying to figure out what it was I needed to confront and needed to write about to realize.

So you divided the question into two sections: 1) What boundaries to I draw up for myself and 2) what boundaries I draw up for my audience. That’s a really great divider I’m gonna try and unpack that by question.

1)      What boundaries do I draw up for myself? How dark is too dark?

That’s an excellent question and something I still deal with because I do imagine these scenes so vividly my heartrate goes up sometimes and I have to be careful to practice self-care before and after writing. I do cry while writing some scenes especially scenes I’m preparing to share and really desperate to communicate well because it’s sensitive and personal for me.

There is a definite line between what I’m willing to write for myself and what I’m willing to write for my audience. When I’m writing for myself (-the first draft🙃👌-) the main priority is my mental health and what I get from this content. Soo…there’s a lot that I imagine vividly there are torture scenes, scenes of abuse, scenes of what COULD have happened depending on my characters’ decisions and many/most of those scenes I will never write; they are just for me to process emotions and to add subtle layers of dimension to my character now.

In that aspect, what is harmful to me is too dark.

2)      What boundaries do I draw up for the audience?

Again this is a great division because they really are separate entities. Now, for the story I was talking about earlier I have a pretty high threshold for “acceptable” violence but I do use a LOT of euphemism and techniques that “normalize” most of the trauma for a significant portion of the story until the “numbing” starts to wear off and part of the healing process is coming to terms with how brutal and raw that experience was but there is a LOT you can do to water it down or dilute it so to say, but I’ll get more into that with your question “What details do I avoid or euphemize”.

The boundaries I draw up for my audience is I don’t provide a lot of full sensory flashbacks; that is I don’t make the audience go through everything my characters go through 2nd hand trauma is very real and it is something I want to avoid doing with my readers and I’m pretty sure a large number of my audience will find a lot of my content triggering, maybe from having endured something similar or having seen through the story to the emotional story/range of my own experience and connect to that on a deep, visceral level. So there’s a lot of “taboo” content as it were.

I think…there’s a balancing act you have to put between romanticizing and thematically “dulling” the trauma and…really being raw and honest…

I don’t go over actual moments of trauma very deeply for my audience; I tend to put my focus on the effects and the impact after the fact. And I have still maintained my rule of “no character actually gets raped” although I’ve read books that portray that really well, like um the third book of Shadow of the Bear by Regina Doman, Waking Rose, really handled this topic well and did like you’re talking about and veiled a lot of the material so that when I was in my tweens reading it I didn’t fully pick up on the fact that one of her characters was raped in the story it wasn’t until I came back and read it again that I fully absorbed a lot more of the details and trauma she was portraying. So that was a very good book to read to handle sensitive topics.

Another thing to think about; if you keep most of the actual moments off-scene no matter how directly you imply it or outright state it in the book, people who are too young or inexperienced in those areas will typically pretty much block it out. They’ll perceive there’s something mature going on but if it’s not been explained and you haven’t been exposed to it you probably won’t really take it in. So you can absolutely take into account that readers will perceive your work according to their maturity levels.

There’s a lot of content that really tows the line of what’s too dark for YA but like I said I started this when I was 13 so…there’s a lot’ve kids who are traumatized and need characters to relate to to process their own trauma. We like to think in this bubble of a certain level of violence just being “other” and nobody in 2022 experiences it but that’s just not true that’s the scary part. You can’t contain this trauma in books, you’re writing about things people are still experiencing somewhere.

So…the big goal for me is to have a book that reaches people at their maturity level so you…if you romanticize something to a certain extent and you images and symbols, the people who need it will get it, the people who don’t need it will sense the depth but reach as far as they need.

And that kinda segways into your next question

1)      What details do I avoid or euphemize?

Well, I actually can’t give you a definite answer coz I haven’t finished my first book even but…I don’t believe in directly showing trauma graphically if it is in any way possible to dilute or apply to a symbol or object.

It’s like…in the book Peter Pan the author says fairies can only experience one emotion at a time and very often the same applies to individual scenes: there can be a huge range of emotions in a scene but the reader will/should be left with just one lasting emotion. They’ll come back and find more nuances when they have processed everything else but there’s usually just one lasting “mood” or “tone” per scene.

If your character is upset or sad or constantly experiencing flashbacks in each scene that’s just the norm the reader will not notice it after a while and that’s good there’s a lot you can just slip under the radar but just having it a constant.

I like to use objects to “hold” a complex range of emotions which you can absolutely use to build complexity on a scene. So even if the reader can only hold one emotion at a time you’re still reminding them of the other emotions in that scene. Like you could have a doll symbolize your character’s pregnancy; it’s a toy she’s too old for it kinda stands out but it’s a simple object and younger readers might gloss over it and not really “get” the significance even with all the drama around it.

That aside, I try to avoid emphasizing trauma and just leave it as “normal” until my characters escape that situation. So I let my characters develop awkwardness and funny quirks that sound sweet and cute but also kinda indicate underlying struggles. Like, my MC’s verrrry shy, is not comfortable talking to people, startles really easy, but he’s also really funny and sassy and I try to emphasize a lot quirks that are kinda cute and awkward there are scenes when he jumps and trips over something and it startles everybody else and it’s kinda funny, and he makes snarky comments to animals like they’re more intelligent that people and he’s so awkward about it and he says the funniest things and it helps the plot because he’ll describe people around him to the animals and that’s how you get his opinions. He also has an internal commentary as optimistic as Eeyore which is really funny and kinda “dulls” all the bad things that happen.

4)      If I wanted to maintain a lighterish feel with heavier themes, what would I do to achieve that?

Now I actually have worked on that before especially in one shortstory I did a while ago “Shoes Like Dreams” so I’m gonna use that as an example I can break down for different techniques. You might want yours to be still lighter and happier idk exactly yet. But here’s a link to the story so you can kinda get a grasp of “how it looks/works” and we can get a clearer idea of what you want and how to fine tune that to your particular narrative.

If you read it like a reader first and get a overarcing idea of the impressions and feelings you’re left with and then see what you wanna change, once you do that I’m gonna break down the story here. (but if you read it first I wanna show the first raw reaction and impressions before analyzing so you get an firm grip what I usually do and compare to what you want to do.

Ok, so now that you’ve read it (I actually haven’t read it in…idk maybe a year I so need to go back and refine it at some point…), going from memory I remember trying to start for Point A emotion to Point B. Point A was exciting and overwhelming and I’ll get into that more later but Point B was painful and meaningful too.

I wanted that story to be about a little girl struggling with the trauma of having survived a car accident that left her crippled and her mom a widow, but I wanted a more light, childlike playful feel that would kinda veil a lot of the more mature ideas there.

So I’m gonna go through a list of techniques I used and see which ones you like! 😊

1)      Objects Carrying Emotions

I used wings to “hold” the emotions of trauma, especially trauma that completely destroyed her dreams of becoming a ballerina but conversely the musicbox with the toy ballerina symbolized hope and adaptability. In the end the wings symbolism shifts onto the shoes which is part of a “plot twist” in a way – not a huge one but some shock lent a little more to the emotional range – and which provided the character growth in a condensed period of time.

The shoes originally “held” emotions of delight and affection and funny quirkiness because they originally starred in the “fairy palace” on the fairy prince who symbolized her playmate but when they appear in the “real world” you realize she associated all those emotions originally with her dreams of learning ballet and it gives more impact to the fact that she lost that dream.

2)      War of Two Worlds

Ok actually three “worlds” but basically the idea is that there are two or more settings that are completely different and irreconcilable with each other: they cannot co-exist in the same POV without causing tension.

In my shortstory I have the “world” we start on – btw worlds can be emotional or physical or both, it could be as simple as two different people with two completely different interpretations of the same event or one person with two different interpretations that are irreconcilable that they can’t decide which one is true – but I used physical/sensory imagery of these “worlds” for this story.

World 1, we start in, is the fairy palace during a ball, the main color palette is blue and grey and white it’s reminiscent of Cinderella (or…that was my intent idk how clearly that actually comes across lol XDD) and the emotional “tone” is wonder and awe and magic but it’s in conflict – there’s a duality because of the lamp which is an object that belongs to World 2. World 1 is her “safe place” but it’s very delicate.

On that same note, her fairy prince friend has a brown-gold color palette that doesn’t quite fit so he’s very subtly “other” as well because he’s entered that world but it’s her world so there’s a lot going on there…

World 2 is the caverns – there’s not a lot of context and there’s not meant to be a lot of context because it’s a little girl playing pretend so any inconsistencies can be chalked up to that.

It explodes with conflict, the main color palette is red and black, it shifts from Cinderella imagery to Aladdin imagery but very intensified and mashed together with the other fairytale.

World 3 is the real world and it fulfils a full 180 shift, there isn’t as simplified a color palette the actual tone of the narrative is a lot more concrete, it changes from 1st person to 3rd and there is little to no romanticism and that world kinda pulls everything together.

So I love using the “worlds” technique to emphasis emotional shifts and conflict and tension between beliefs and worldviews. How you could use that in your story would be when your character is enslaved they’re taken from their World to a completely different world of slavery and maneuvering new hierarchies and tensions and then there’s the World of the slavers which is a completely different rubric even though they coexist in the exact same area mostly.

If you use the Worlds technique for that you can normalize a lot of the slavery issues to the point where nobody even notices it until they escape and the worlds shift again really. Never underestimate the power of normalizing evils, that’s how people get away with heinous crimes and how everyone just turns a blind eye.

But for you if you normalize and then move into it more and add depth it makes things more persuasive because people will be initially acclimated to it and then horrified by what they accept – and people too young to get it probably won’t get it until they reach that maturity so you still protect them from those themes while vividly describing them.

3)      Acclimation

I’ve already really discussed this, if you repeat something enough people stop paying attention to it, if you treat their slavery as “not the main issue” compared to day to day survival and maneuvering the slavers’ wills you can almost reach a point where it’s a funny slice of life about them trying to “get away” with stuff until they find a way to escape. Seriously, and that’s the scary part it is EASY to avoid and euphemize issues and make light of heavy issues.

2)      A to B Emotions

I’ve probably touched on this already but for every scene you need two primary emotions: the emotion they start with and the emotion they end with, that’s how you keep beats in your story pretty much. So when you start a scene pick a color scheme, pick two emotions, action and transition between the emotions. Many scenes require goals not all of them do though, your characters don’t have to always actively want something all the time so don’t lose yourself under the pressure of “every scene must further the plot” No many scenes just need to establish information/character investment you’ll need for the plot.

I think that’s about all to start with, lemmie know if I’m overloading or overexplaining I’m very prone to doing that and making information too cluttered. Aaand tell me what you like and don’t like about my shortstory and which aspects/techniques you’d change or adjust to fit your particular goals and narrative styles.

You asked me one more question and I was saving it for last so I could focus my full attention on it.

1)      How do you seek to honor God with your writing?

I think that’s the most important question because that should be the center of everything inside and outside writing life.

My writing is…for me it’s a prayer. I write about these topics because I am struggling with them, under their weight and I can’t understand why God would make a world like this. Why Someone Who loves us so much would seemingly fail to protect us. And…in writing these scenarios I’ve found answers that…were even higher beyond my comprehension. It gives me clarity and mystery, I can’t contain it but it is so so personal for me. Writing comforts me and disturbs me, it forces me to reevaluate values I hold or used to hold to practice apologetics on an emotional level and to…realize things about myself and really dig into…a lot of unprocessed pain and growth.

So…writing makes me a better person because it brings me closer to God and helps me see my faults and also forgive myself.

Ohhhhh da vibes!!!! Yessssssssss I totally get that. There’s a lot of reasons that can happen, especially with this subject matter.

1.       It could just be you’ve put up an emotional wall between yourself and the content and are too scared to feel everything that it’s going to bring up.

2.       An emotional wall being afraid of not handling the subject well.

3.       Lack of brainstorming prior to writing – depending on your plotting style

4.       It’s telling you to wait a couple months and feed it brain food and media similar to the vibes and it’ll pop out with something wicked cool when it’s ready.

5.       Etc etc XDD

I wanna interject into @calidris’ thoughts too but I gotta post this before it breaks SE XDDDDDD